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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26557417">Devil and the Huntsman</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue/pseuds/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue'>48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Spoilers S1E1, Trans Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, hurt/comfort?, just looked at canon and was like, nah, no idea what this is, renfri lives au?, weird philosophical stuff idk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:08:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,374</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26557417</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue/pseuds/48eyesand32teeth1sharptongue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Geralt considers the nature of his profession.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Devil and the Huntsman</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>the world is a very stressful place but at least we all got each other</p><p>i dunno guys i'm just exhausted</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>fic title a song by sam lee</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's not that Geralt can't empathize with people designated as monsters, or deviating from what 'good' people consider routine, and therefore, moral and right. He'd had a lot of choices taken from him.</p><p>Oftentimes, monster is just a name for something people want to hurt, whether it's done harm or not.</p><p>And so many times, Geralt has had the choice of what he is and what he can do taken from him, as much as he'd carved out a path to choose where he goes and what he hunts and how he lives.</p><p>Other choices he'd consider his, whether they were made by his situation when he was too young to choose or not.</p><p>But Geralt knows this much- he was not meant to bear children. And the thought of being forced to would be upsetting, if it wasn't so far irrelevant now. But he understands fears of that, just fine, from the time before being a Witcher.</p><p>He understands the weight of what could be done to others not as lucky as him.</p><p>And Geralt knows, he wasn't made to be a father.</p><p>This isn't a life for a child, even if he found the strength not to close himself off from a world that hardly wished to let him in. You take what gentleness and kindness you can build on the road, but the road and the world around it don't give enough of it, not with how many bloody ends are waiting and how many people would hurt Witchers like him, if they didn't have the power to protect themselves, fighting monsters as they do.</p><p>He'd carved his own space out, in his own path.</p><p>And it will be enough, because Geralt knows how to make it enough.</p><p>Even if he wishes the life of a Witcher didn't necessitate being solitary, save for Roach, while constantly on the road.</p><p>Being less hungry would be a bonus, too.</p><p>--</p><p>Being a Witcher involved cleaning up a lot of other people's messes. It's the nature of the profession, really.</p><p>That's why Geralt has to be picky.</p><p>If you don't draw the line somewhere, people start to blur the lines from what you do and who you are into what they can use you for.</p><p>And Geralt knows, the only way you keep your freedom is staying on the road, fixing what you can, staying out of quarrels that aren't the immediate job, so you don't become unrecognizable to yourself.</p><p>Everyone keeps trying to tell him the nature of evil.</p><p>What they don't seem to notice is that Geralt already knows it is everywhere. He sees it, even when people think he doesn't.</p><p>You just have to find the quiet places you can get away from it, in between chasing it down.</p><p>And you can't fight other people's battles, for them. Witchers can only solve the symptoms, or the immediate scapegoat, or the things that don't fit into the world the way it used to.</p><p>Witchers don't really fix everything else, even if people tend to try to get Geralt to be their scapegoat, or their weapon, or their tool.</p><p>Geralt is his own man, working by his own rules, free in a way some of the world is not.</p><p>Even if other people prefer to be blind.</p><p>But people always see what they want to see, until necessity deems they don't.</p><p>And the nature of being a Witcher means making sure that necessity doesn't rear it's head, so people can live in their insulated, limited contained worlds in hubs they pretend are safe, until the rest of the world comes knocking.</p><p>But Geralt is used to dealing in contradictions.</p><p>That's how Witchers operate. How they find a way to hunt the vile, hungry mouths in the wilderness, or give aid to those people think are a monster when they aren't the monsters at all.</p><p>Still.</p><p>Geralt won't choose when he's seen too many things go wrong. When choosing feels as evil as not choosing.</p><p>Even if he'd like to take sides... There's no telling what choosing will do.</p><p>--</p><p>"People call you a monster too."</p><p>"A mutant." Geralt's mouth quirks as he says it. It's important, to keep the language from getting too muddled. One thing is not something just because someone else says it is.</p><p>"What if they come after you? Attack you?" Renfri challenges.</p><p>Geralt holds her gaze.</p><p>"They have."</p><p><b>"</b>Why not kill them?"</p><p><b>"</b>Because then I am what they say I am." Only it is not about what they say- it never is, because the world does what it does. It's about what Geralt will know about himself. About what code he holds himself to.</p><p>About what he chooses to be, in a world that is hostile more often than not.</p><p>His hands are not always clean- but that's because he's been given very little choice as to whether he can, or not.</p><p>Renfri's stare is searing.</p><p>"If I tell you, Witcher, that I can neither forgive Stregobor nor renounce my revenge, is that it? I admit I’m a monster?"</p><p><b>"</b>Yes." He pauses. Just because someone calls someone something does not make something true. There is a truth, in becoming what you foresee. That's why he stays out of messes that aren't his burden to bear. Because once you let the anger fester and consume you, it's not about what is right, or good, or fair. It just is, and it consumes everything until you don't know your way out again.</p><p>And Geralt won't let someone else's anger consume him, won't let someone else's battles be fought when they aren't something he can fix.</p><p>There are so many out there like Renfri, and yet none like her at all. He can't stop every Stregobor, or save everyone like her, even if he'd like to.</p><p>He can only save the ones he finds.</p><p>And Renfri won't save herself like this.</p><p>Geralt keeps his voice gentle and soft, as he clarifies, "Or you can leave Blaviken and finally live. You choose, Princess."</p><p>Renfri has suffered. Renfri has every reason to feel what she feels, or to act on it. And Geralt can understand the nature of her revenge, to not want to let what happened to her happen to anyone else, even if it not entirely about that, and that is the trap. Her idea of justice, for all its intentions, could lead down a darker path just from the course it's already on. But there is a cliff in the asking- in expecting that Geralt will back this, because, for all Geralt has seen he knows this: the minute there is collateral damage, it's not about fixing the past, or moving forward. It is just bloody, and raw, and leads to cutting down everything that ever made you feel that way again.</p><p>It's thinking that everyone else is disposable, that everyone is monster and not worth saving, that no cost is too great to mete out that judgement.</p><p>By doing what people expected, Renfri would start to believe the narrative everyone spun for her.</p><p>And more than that, she'd be playing into their hands, into the game of what people decide for you.</p><p>The only way out is to live, live freely, on your own terms, where you can rebuild and move beyond what broke you into jagged edges in the first place.</p><p>Geralt hopes she finds that- peace, or closure, and not the thing that she's been feeding the flames of, the things that threaten to eat all that is left.</p><p>If she wants to escape, she can't play games with other people's lives, or her own.</p><p>She has to choose to live. To escape the places that wish to remake her into the image it tried to break her into in the first place.</p><p>But Geralt can't choose for her.</p><p>Even if he hopes.</p><p>--</p><p>Renfri's rage, however, is vast. And she does not want to give it up.</p><p>And if Geralt is to choose between people who had as little say in what happened to her as what she dares to do to them now, when Stregobor would let the people die inside his tower or not... (He was a monster. Not the kind of monster witches dispatch, or a monster that wouldn't pop up like a daisy the minute a new Stregobor was in the picture. But taking his life to mete out justice for wrongs already done... Geralt can't choose that. If Stregobor did something else, then he wouldn't challenge the balance of places he does not decide for. And choosing to end Stregobor on Renfri's terms, through blackmail, isn't a choice, either. Witchers can't be bribed. Geralt won't be backed into a corner, no matter how many people try. No matter how much he'd like to let his own hurt cloud his judgment.)</p><p>But most of all, Geralt won't let her choose to hurt those people- even if everyone still hates him for it. You don't expect to be loved as a Witcher, when people don't think you can love at all.</p><p>(Renfri did, and Geralt can see she could still heal. Could still be something else from the thing she was letting herself break down into.)</p><p>And he gives her chances, to turn away.</p><p>To see she doesn't have to do this. (He doesn't want to hurt her.)</p><p>But she wants to hurt everyone- and that's what makes one lesser evil turn into another.</p><p>That's what makes a monster over a man.</p><p>When you choose to let yourself destroy everything, no matter the price.</p><p>When you lose sight of who you are.</p><p>--</p><p>After Renfri, Geralt reconsiders.</p><p>Sometimes, choosing feels like playing into people's hands.</p><p>But sometimes, you can't pretend at distance.</p><p>Sometimes, you have to choose a lesser evil over deciding not to choose, because if you don't, the world chooses for you, too. Sometimes, you are as much the linchpin on what happens, even if the road you are on was made by other hands, and even if it seems like you can keep your head down and move on.</p><p>Because when the powerful have a chance to pretend at blamelessness, to keep hold of the power they wield and can use it again...</p><p>They take the only attempts you have at staying out of it and bring a new evil to follow the old, due to lack of consequences, due to the way power holds itself unaccountable.</p><p>Sometimes, choosing not to choose is enough. Other times, the powerful are waiting like vultures over the fallout of messes they created, while you try to find a way through options that have no kindness or rightness to speak of.</p><p>Being a Witcher means choosing, because if you don't strike at the right moment, you die.</p><p>And the monster eats you alive.</p><p>And if you don't recognize the real monster, then you've already lost.</p><p>(If you can't figure out who is a monster and who isn't, you don't last long. Some monsters just need a way to see they aren't one.</p><p>Some need a blade to the heart.</p><p>And some are just lying in wait to be monsters again, the minute they think they are safe.</p><p>Witchers are supposed to dispel that illusion.</p><p>Monsters are never safe. Not from them.)</p><p>--</p><p>His mistake wasn't asking Renfri to choose.</p><p>It was refusing to do more, even if he wouldn't capitulate to her terms.</p><p>He was too late to help Renfri the way she needed.</p><p>He won't be too late, next time.</p><p>Next time, he'd intervene earlier, before there's a chance for someone to feel like they don't have any other option at all.</p><p>And while Renfri made her choices...</p><p>Geralt still knows he made his own. And they could be better.</p><p>All you can do is move forward, and do what must be done, and learn what did not work and must be fixed to fit a world that doesn't want to be.</p><p>--</p><p>(What gets left out of the story is a partial truth- Renfri chose to walk away. To follow Geralt when he stayed her hand, when she'd rather choose otherwise.</p><p>Not as Renfri, not really. Renfri can't start over, not like she needs to. Not with a name and a history that tries to claw at her and won't let go.</p><p>So Geralt helps her become nameless.</p><p>And no one dared say anything to the contrary.</p><p>Not with the word Butcher on their lips and too many other fears to categorize.</p><p>And they already hated Geralt, anyway.</p><p>What is one more rumor, one more lie, over a litany of many?)</p><p>--</p><p>But Geralt still thinks, if Renfri did choose otherwise, and did die that day, how would he choose a lesser evil, when all evil does is create more?</p><p>How do you stop the machine of something bigger than you, beyond what is just one choice in a sea of scheming, selfish people who choose to be monsters as much as men, more often than not?</p><p>How do you choose not see so many monsters in a world tries to make people so afraid they see no other option, when choosing to see people as monsters is half the battle making you feel like one in the first place?</p><p>But Geralt knows this.</p><p>Destiny isn't something that finds you.</p><p>Destiny is something you choose, so you don't let the world make you into something unrecognizable, into whatever a mob wants you to be.</p><p>(The world did not create Geralt, not like Renfri claimed. Not like the world would prefer, when it tried to keep Geralt in the chains it wanted him in.)</p><p>Geralt created himself, out of the ashes the world considered his, and he fought every single step of the way for himself despite all the ways the world tried to burn him to the ground right along with the rest of them.</p><p>Half of not becoming a monster is choosing to live.</p><p>You have to know how to live again, when the world tries to set you on fire.</p><p>And holding on, helping other people up even when you are just crossing paths along the road, is part of choosing.</p><p>Even when it doesn't feel like a choice so much as the only way to keep going.</p>
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